Accountability and Improvement

Effective accountability systems should increase the probability that productive practices will be used, while identifying and correcting problems that may occur. They do this by providing the information, capacity building, and support needed to identify strengths and challenges and make necessary improvements.

Learn More

Districts and states are redesigning their accountability systems to promote equitable opportunity and college and career readiness for all students. These systems are designed to ensure that all students receive a quality education, to identify and address problems, and to support continuous improvement. In an accountable system, students are engaged in meaningful learning, taught by competent and caring professionals, and supported by adequate resources to ensure that they graduate with the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective citizens and contributors to a democratic society.

Effective accountability systems:

Rely on multiple measures to assess how well schools and school systems are preparing students for college and careers.

Share and analyze data—disaggregated by race, socioeconomic status, and gender—to understand how well schools and school systems are educating each and every child.

Hold district, state, and federal education officials accountable for adequate and equitable distribution of resources and for their effective use.

Support the capacity building needed for all stakeholders to be knowledgeable about best practices and engaged in the reflection and problem solving required for continuous improvement.

“The purpose of accountability is to monitor progress on meaningful goals and to support continuous improvement.”

Much was accomplished by the civil rights revolution, writes Gary Orfield, Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. But gains have been lost and times have changed. In this Education and the Path to Equity blog, Orfield says we need a new agenda for a more complex society and a new vision of integration in a century where we will all soon be minorities.

In this installment of the Education and the Path to Equity blog series, John B. King Jr., President and CEO of the Education Trust and former U.S. Secretary of Education, observes that 50 years after the Kerner Commission, the striking disparities in opportunity that still exist throughout our nation are a reflection of choices that we have made as a society. As a nation, we are not acting on what we know is in the best interest of our children.

As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Report, we must recognize that educational institutions currently produce exactly what they were created to produce—opportunity gaps, writes Dr. Ebony Green, Executive Director of Equity and Access of the Newburgh Enlarged City School District. In the latest installment of the blog series, Education and the Path to Equity, Dr. Green shares how her school district is implementing a systemwide approach to equity in order to create opportunities and improve outcomes for all students.

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) to examine racial division and disparities in the United States. In 1968, the Kerner Commission released a report concluding that the nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Without major social changes, the Commission warned, the U.S. faced a “system of apartheid” in its major cities. Today, 50 years after the report was issued, that prediction characterizes most of our large urban areas, where intensifying segregation and concentrated poverty have collided with disparities in school funding to reinforce educational inequality.

This study of California’s recent major school finance reform, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), is among the first to provide evidence of LCFF’s impacts on student outcomes. We found that LCFF-induced increases in school spending led to significant increases in high school graduation rates and academic achievement, particularly among children from low-income families. The evidence suggests that money targeted to students’ needs can make a significant difference in student outcomes and can narrow achievement gaps.

While community schools vary in the programs they offer and the ways they operate, four features—or pillars—appear in most community schools: integrated student supports, expanded learning time and opportunities, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practice. These infographics examine each pillar to provide a look at community schools in action.

Education policymakers working to address the impacts of growing economic and racial inequality on students often look to community schools as an effective approach for supporting students and their families in communities facing concentrated poverty. This brief and related report synthesizes findings from 143 rigorous research studies and finds that community schools can improve outcomes for all students, especially those facing lack of access to high-quality schools and out-of-school barriers to learning.

Education policymakers working to address the impacts of growing economic and racial inequality on students often look to community schools as an effective approach for supporting students and their families in communities facing concentrated poverty. This report, which synthesizes findings from 143 rigorous research studies, finds community schools can improve outcomes for all students, and especially those facing lack of access to high-quality schools and out-of-school barriers to learning.

In addition to providing students and families with much-needed services and supports, well-implemented community schools can be a successful strategy for whole-school transformation. That's the finding of a recently released brief, Community Schools: An Evidence-Based Strategy for Equitable School Improvement, published jointly by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Education Policy Center. This LPI Blog post features a Q&A with the study authors, who detail their approach and findings, describe the four interdependent features of community schools, and discuss how well-implemented community schools can be used as a targeted and comprehensive intervention for school improvement under ESSA.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are using a new approach to accountability based on multiple indicators of educational opportunity and performance and can decide how to use these measures to identify schools for intervention and support and to encourage systems of continuous improvement. The decision rule approach can encourage greater attention to each of the measures, offer more transparency about how school performance factors into identification, and support more strategic interventions than those informed only by a single rating, ranking, or grade. This brief describes five options for using decision rules that are designed to meet ESSA’s requirements and support states' use of systems that encourage continuous improvement across all schools.

Pages

Featured Resources

In keeping with the Learning Policy Institute’s commitment to communicating high-quality research to inform education policy and practice, we have assembled a selection of reports by other organizations that address critical questions and issues in LPI’s core topic areas. This collection, which will be periodically updated, is part of our larger effort to provide policymakers, practitioners, and stakeholders with useful information as they seek to advance equitable and empowering learning for all students.

Education policymakers working to address the impacts of growing economic and racial inequality on students often look to community schools as an effective approach for supporting students and their families in communities facing concentrated poverty. This report, which synthesizes findings from 143 rigorous research studies, finds community schools can improve outcomes for all students, and especially those facing lack of access to high-quality schools and out-of-school barriers to learning.

How can schools be encouraged to help students develop socially and emotionally and to foster positive school environments in the context of new accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act? This report provides a framework for considering how measures of social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate may be incorporated into an accountability and continuous improvement system.

Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date with the Learning Policy Institute.